Symbols
by Khilari
Summary: During Christine's captivity Erik shows her tarot cards He says they can't tell the future, but symbols have power of their own. Purely Leroux based.


Erik spread the beautifully painted cards out before Christine one day, perhaps in another attempt to amuse her. They were unfamiliar to her, the suits were not the ones she knew, being instead swords, pentacles, cups and wands. But they were beautiful.

'What are they?' she asked, they didn't look like they were for playing games with.

Erik swept them up and shuffled them, making them dance between his fingers. 'Haven't you heard of the tarot, my dear?'

Christine recoiled, such things were a sin, but curiosity drew her forward again. 'Can you really tell the future?' she asked.

'Madame Giry thinks so,' said Erik. 'No, no one can tell the future with painted card and Erik will not play such tricks on you. But they are symbols and there is truth in them. Would you like to see?' Without waiting for an answer he riffled through the cards and laid one in front of Christine without looking at it. 'The Star,' he said. 'When all is bleak and desolate she gives light and hope, just a small guiding light strong and bright enough to raise us out of darkness. That's your card Christine.'

Christine gazed at the card in front of her, a beautiful and serene blonde woman pouring out two jugs of water, one onto the ground and one into a pool. No, it was not her. Stars may guide people out of darkness, but only because they can remain untouched by the people they guide. A star could not have been dragged out of the sky and imprisoned by the one who sought her light. 'Show me another one,' she said, avoiding Erik's hopeful, worshipful gaze.

The next card was thrown in front of her almost violently, is if it were a gauntlet. 'There's your boy,' Erik spat.

The Fool, and perhaps it was meant as an insult, but Christine's heart caught in her throat because Erik was right. This was Raoul, this smiling young man in jester's garb walking so innocently over a precipice. Oh, Raoul, she had lead him into such danger. Christine reached out tenderly and almost unconsciously to touch the painted cheek of the Fool.

The cards scattered around her, hitting her face and chest and sliding into her lap. Christine shrieked and closed her eyes, more from shock than fear. She felt like Alice, attacked by a pack of playing cards. Well, perhaps she was down a rabbit hole of sorts. When she opened her eyes again Erik was standing with his back to her, fists clenched at his sides. Not knowing what else to do she bent down and started gathering the cards up. Some of them disturbed her, the woman in chains, the man with swords in his back. Death looked all too much like Erik and she pushed him into the centre of the pack quickly. Some of them were beautiful. One that caught her attention was a maiden in white gently closing a lion's mouth. Strength, she read. If only she was more like the maiden, she thought, glancing over at her wild beast in the corner. If only she was strong enough to somehow prevail without harming him. She wanted to keep the card with her, but was sure such an impulse was sinful and, besides, Erik would notice.

Christine started picking the cards up more hurriedly, returning them to the pack without looking at them. Erik had said it was all a trick, but she distrusted the pull she felt towards them. The pull of beauty and symbols and nothing more, perhaps. Nothing more! It was the same hold music held, the same that Erik had exploited. She snatched a card up quickly and paused. It showed a pale woman with dark hair standing before the moon which was showing through the gnarled branches of a tree. Slashed across the surface was a line of dripping red as if the card itself was bleeding. Christine shuddered.

'Erik,' she called without looking up. 'One is damaged.'

'Yes,' said Erik. 'The Moon. Erik knows.'

'What happened to it?' Christine picked up the last few cards and squared the deck between her hands. She set it back on the table and took her seat again. Erik came to sit across from her, shooting her a slightly abashed look. 'Erik was angry,' he explained and Christine wondered whether it was an explanation for the damaged card or an apology for throwing them at her.

'You were angry with the card?' she asked uncertainly.

'With the Moon. She is a harsh mistress.' Erik sighed. 'The Moon stands for madness and inspiration, her land is a wild one full of wolves and nightmares. There are wonders there, wonders as maddening as the horrors, and a man may bring back many things. But the mind rises and falls like the tide at her pull and there is no _peace.'_

Was that bleak internal landscape what she, his guiding star, was meant to save him from? What did he expect of her, looking at her so pleadingly with empty seeming sockets?

'I used to want that world,' she said, desperate to break the silence with the first thing that came into her head. 'I went out by moonlight to look for korrigans. I even thought I saw them sometimes. And later my father and I lived wrapped in a dream, as if reality didn't even exist, and while it wasn't wild and harsh it was still a place of wonders and -' And what? Madness? Her father had not been mad!

'We could live like that,' Erik said gently. 'I could sing for you so that you will forget ever to look at me, and create a whole world just for us.'

It was what she had wanted, a return to the dream that had died with her father. What she had been too busy longing for to let herself live. But, almost despite herself, she had grown. She didn't want to be wrapped away from the world any longer. And her father, her beloved, mourned for father? Even if he was here - and she still wished so very much that he was - she would not want to go back to that dream world. Nor did she want Erik to recreate it.

For lack of anything else to do she picked up the deck of cards to hand to Erik, turning her hand over as she did and catching sight of the card on the bottom. A tower struck by lightning.


End file.
